May 2011
‘After negotiating a maze of passageways Berners-Lee delivers me at the door of Noam Chomsky’
![‘After negotiating a maze of passageways Berners-Lee delivers me at the door of Noam Chomsky’](/wp-content//files_flutter/1306511805MIT_firetruck_hack_2006.jpg)
MIT in Second Life From The Guardian: Before my tour of MIT ends I am given a taste of what this astonishing abundance of riches means in practice. In the space of half an hour I enjoy the company – in the flesh and spacially – of three of...
Read More“I heard the runners got a little restless”
![“I heard the runners got a little restless”](/wp-content//files_flutter/1306498536bmara.jpg)
Barkley Marathon, 2009, Michael Hodge From The Believer: On the western edge of Frozen Head State Park, just before dawn, a man in a rust brown trench coat blows a giant conch shell. Runners stir in their tents. They fill their water pouches. They tape their blisters. They eat...
Read MoreThe Ultimate Rose
![The Ultimate Rose](/wp-content//files_flutter/1306491218salvador_dali_gallery_the_rose.jpg)
Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens, Henry Arthur Payne, 1908 From Times Literary Supplement: The rose was made for symbolism, metaphor, allusion. Its beautiful flowers – in the wild, each bearing the symbolically charged number of five petals – bloom alongside vicious thorns. Sight,...
Read MoreFreewheelin’
![Freewheelin’](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2011/05/18160101/Bob-400x90.png)
The world Bob Dylan and The Beatles made remains in its moment of creation all the more compelling to those who lived through it for its tantalising glimpse of a different self and an authentic life...
Read MoreBack to the Arcades
![Back to the Arcades](/wp-content//files_flutter/1306326620tunnels.jpg)
by Richard Prouty At one point as I was writing my doctoral dissertation on Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project I jokingly suggested to my dissertation advisor that I should leave the project unfinished, just like the Arcades Project itself. “Ah, the mimetic fallacy!” he responded. That ended the conversation. His...
Read MoreThere will inevitably come a point when photorealism in videogames reaches its zenith. But what happens after that point is achieved?
![There will inevitably come a point when photorealism in videogames reaches its zenith. But what happens after that point is achieved?](/wp-content//files_flutter/1307004425woman-mario.jpg)
Visual Games: Photorealism in Crisis | by Kyle Chayka,
Kill Screen
In certain corners of the world of Super Mario 64, there are graphical glitches that turn a seemingly solid space into a splintered chaos of polygons...
Read MoreKeep the Red Textbook Flying
![Keep the Red Textbook Flying](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2011/05/18212658/marx-engels1-400x90.jpg)
Socialism is an old idea. The ideas and movements that can be subsumed under the term, encompassing a plethora of radical or moderate shades, have shaped the course of human history over the last two hundred years.
Read MoreWhy Elif Batuman doesn’t read reviews
![Why Elif Batuman doesn’t read reviews](/wp-content//files_flutter/1305913750elif-reviews.jpg)
by Elif Batuman Let’s say you’re writing a book. Every day you get up and think about it and work on it and change it. Then, at some more-or-less arbitrary point (I didn’t realize before I published a book how arbitrary this point is), it’s taken away from you...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
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